Before I begin this blog, I must warn that if you don’t have kids or regularly have potty talk in your house, this blog is going to make you feel a little bit squeamish. If you have kids, however, you won’t bat an eyelash.
Today begins the process called potty training at our house. Don’t freak out - Briana, my 3-year old, has been potty trained for a year now. She started in pull-ups at 22 months, was potty trained during the day pretty soon after her 2nd birthday, and completely potty trained (ie nights too) by 26 months. Now it’s Abigail’s turn.
I’m envious of people who tell me stories about how they sat their kids on the potty for 48 hours and at the end of the weekend, their kids were trained…envious and skeptical. Yes, I believe that it worked for them, but in our house, potty training is a process with 3 distinct phases.
PHASE ONE: POTTY CURIOSITY
Phase one is all about generating interest in the potty, but forcing nothing. This phase begins when the kid shows interest in the potty unprompted. This is the phase that Abigail has been in for a few months now. At 18 months old, Abby had entered a phase, which she is still in, wherein she wanted to be just like her big sister. No matter what Briana says she wants, there’s a tiny little echo of “I want *insert anything here* too!” Abby astutely noticed that one big thing that Briana gets to do that she doesn’t is to sit on the big potty. After that every time Briana said she had to go potty and headed over, Abigail would say “I potty too!” and run off after Bree. Then of course would come the screams “Get Abby outta here! No Abby! Mommy get Abigail!” because while Bree can come in while I’m pottying to demand anything from a snack to a hug or to try to help Mommy, it’s just to gross to have Abby in there playing with the toilet paper while she’s using the bathroom.
So it was Briana’s idea to have Abby sit on the “little baby potty” while Bree went to the bathroom. Although I was reluctant to start phase one with my 18 month old, I conceded to let Abby’s interest, and not my own timeline, drive us, so we went out and got some Pullups for my baby.
Abby regularly sits on the potty now, although she does it mostly to be like Bree. She will not use the baby potty that Bree used forever though. She wants to sit on the regular potty like Bree does, so we now have a removable potty that we snap on the regular potty for Abby to sit on it.
Phase One has a very distinct end. The successful peeing or pooping in the potty after a self initiated trip to the potty, or in Bree’s case, the screaming of “I want to wear panties like a big girl!”
According to the experts at babycenter.com, which I read and chatted on religiously when I was pregnant, it is time to start formal potty training (which I call Phase Two) when your child:
ü Has regular, well-formed bowel movements at relatively predictable times.
ü Has "dry" periods of at least three or four hours, which shows that his bladder muscles are developed enough to hold urine.
ü Can pull his pants up and down.
ü Shows interest in others' bathroom habits (wants to watch you go to the bathroom or wear underwear).
ü Gives a physical or verbal sign when he's having a bowel movement such as grunting, squatting, or telling you.
ü Demonstrates a desire for independence.
ü Can follow simple instructions, such as "go get the toy."
For the complete potty readiness checklist, go to:
I didn’t put the whole list here because I disagree with some of the points, such as the child needing to know the value of putting things where they belong to be ready for potty training. If that was a real criteria, then I wouldn’t be ready yet – just ask anyone in my family or my maids. Also I don’t think you need the vocabulary around pottying or even the sensations on day one. They’ll learn those things quickly as you start. I’m sure that the items on the checklist are well researched but I wanted to focus on the ones that I think are the most important.
Abby is now 23 months old and is finished with Phase One, and the second week of the kids’ 2 week long Spring Break seems like a great time to introduce Phase Two.
PHASE TWO: DAYTIME PANTIES
Phase two is the wearing of panties. Don’t worry if you have play dates set up with me this week – Abby will be in pull-ups when we’re out of the house. I learned that lesson the hard way with Bree. Sorry again Elissa J
For Briana, my diva, Phase Two started with what else but fashion. One day she came home from school and gave me a rundown of every kid in her 18mo to 3 year old class and what panties they wear. In her mind there was delineation between the “babies” in diapers and pull-ups and the “big kids” in big girl or big boy panties. Of course my husband continues to this day to try to correct her that there’s no such thing as big boy panties, only underwear, but Briana insists on calling them big boy panties. Briana wanted to wear panties and I told her that in order to wear panties she needed to get a pee pee in the potty. This upped the ante for Briana and she couldn’t wait to use the potty after that.
One of my favorite stories about Briana at school is this one. Briana was using the potty regularly but refused to poo poo in the potty at school. Briana somehow convinced her teacher (the teacher herself when relating the story can’t even remember how Bree finagled it) that if she poo pooed in the potty she should be allowed to cook herself a chocolate cake in the kitchen. Cooking is a skill that is reserved for the older kids in the class and Bree said that if she could poo poo in the potty then she was a big kid and wanted all of the perks. That was on a Thursday, which was her last day of school for the week. All weekend she told us how she was going to poo in the potty on Monday and bake herself a chocolate cake. I secretly hoped that the teacher was serious about letting her, because Bree had taken it very seriously. And on Monday, she did just that – she pooed in the potty. The teacher wasn’t expecting it first thing on Monday and did not yet have the materials for a chocolate cake. So Briana told her that if she couldn’t make her cake on her poo poo day, then she wanted a whole Poo Poo Party for the whole class the next day and she wanted to make a BIG BIG chocolate cake for the whole class to celebrate her achievement. So Tuesday the class had a potty party, courtesy of the negotiating powers of my barely 2 year old.
But back to Abigail and the present time. For the past few days Abby has been wearing panties all afternoon. The first time she had to go to the potty, she told me and ran over and I put her on the potty and she did it. She then starting singing for herself, “Abby can pee pee in the poooootttty. The Abby can pee pee in the pooootttty.” As Bree and I danced to her song and starting singing along, Abby jumped off the potty to flush and to shush us because only she can sing the celebratory song apparently. She flushes triumphantly (with Bree’s help) and then for some unknown reason grabs her panties off of the floor and says “I wash my panties now.” And throws her panties into the potty. Pair one gone. Before I can grab her, her arms reach in to grab the soaking wet panties out and she tries to put them back on saying “all clean.” Potty related bath number one begins and I start to feel like it’s going to be a long week.
Today, however, Abby did not have a single accident all afternoon when she was in her panties (we had a playdate this morning and I had her in pullups so I didn’t take her to the potty like I should have). Go Abby! So I guess we’re firmly in the potty training Phase Two now.
PHASE THREE: SURVIVING THE NIGHTTIME
Phase three is my own personal nightmare. In order to allow the kids to wear panties to bed, they need to be able to go to the bathroom by themselves at night. This means that the child locks have to come off of their doors, which further means that the kids are now free to come and go from their rooms as they please. Hence the Mommy Nightmare. The key to readiness for phase three at my house has nothing to do with the potty prowess. Phase three involves getting additional freedom and therefore requires maturity.
That being said, one of the websites that I thought most eloquently described what I call Phase Three is http://www.pottytrainingconcepts.com/A-Potty-Accidents-Nighttime.html
They say (and these are excerpts from their larger text which you can read on the afore mentioned link):
“Achieving night time control is not simply a learned skill, but rather a physiological development and the control is largely involuntary. Babies urinate around the clock and then at about the average age of 18 months, as the sphincter muscles mature, toddlers will make the transition from urinating around the clock to only urinating during the waking hours as is the case with most adults. The key to dealing with night time accidents is slightly different from dealing with day time accidents, because night time accidents are NOT voluntary. Your child does not have ability to control the accident, so, there are no consequences given. As you face another clean up, realize that this is hard on your child as well. S/he does not want to have accidents any more than you do. The situation has to be very neutral. Just clean up and move on. Your overall plan for potty training should include a plan for night time potty training.”
By the way, if you’re looking for lots of good information on potty training, that is a great site to go to. They break down all of the potty training methods and discuss them, and they have a lot of products (like potties and panties and dolls) that you can buy.
I assume that it will be a while before Abby is ready for Phase Three. She does get up dry many mornings, but not consistently enough, and she is not at all ready for the freedom of being able to leave her room as she pleases (and frankly we’ve taken all of the baby gates off of the stairs and are otherwise not babyproofed sufficiently for her to be free to roam by herself in the dark).
Bree eventually just got tired of the Nighttime Pull-ups and wanted to wear her panties at night. She asked for a few weeks before we were ready to let her try. It seems silly in retrospect, but Bree was actually potty trained during the day and still sleeping in a crib. I was nervous – she was my first kid! I attempted to stall her by telling her that if she could go a whole week without losing the jewel on the front of her Pull-ups (the sign on the Pull-ups that we bought that the child has peed in the Pull-ups) then she could wear her panties to bed. The next week, Bree crawled happily into her newly converted toddler bed with her panties on. Such a determined little kid! That was also the night that we turned back on the video portion of her baby monitor, just in case. Briana is a mature kid though and I can’t think of a single time to date that she left her room and went anywhere but straight into our room to potty (even though she has her own bathroom!) and back to her own bed. Hopefully Abby will be the same way, though somehow I doubt that I’ll be that lucky again since Abigail is quite adventurous.
My advice to any other mothers out there potty training their kids is to be patient. It’s yucky and time consuming to potty train a toddler, but it’s so worth it when you can ditch the diaper bag for a normal sized purse again…or at least a smaller diaper bag, since my diapers for Bree were just replaced by diva sunglasses and snacks. Also, don’t worry if your friends all tell you that their kids were potty trained overnight and your mom tells you that you were in panties on your first birthday. Most of those people are probably lying anyway and even if it is true, like everything else in parenting, do what works for you and your family and don’t worry about what anyone else says works for them. Well, except me of course J
<3 Pedigreed Housewife
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